Outer Music Diary

Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties - England 1977

About half of this album rollicks well in a fun romp-about sort of way, funky and chunky in places with an “in ya’ face” attitude that does not decry a punk rock musical backdrop. The musicians are accomplished and drop their motley melodies along alright. Oddball to the dirty bird humour reigns throughout without necessarily being all gutter. The rest takes cues from the ‘too straight-ahead we rock’ school of “..let’s play the pubs, that’s the good circuit, inn’t it?”

Ian Dury & the Blockheads - Do It Yourself - England 1979

This one is a bit more hop-steppin’ with the showman swank in a more effectual mode, casually jazzin’ up the scene a bit too. The vaudeville villain sliding right on up to the jump kicker with clam digging boots on to wade through some squeaky horn licks from the sassy saxy. The syncopation is regularized for steadiness on a crooked dancefloor. These records are made for fun, with a cane, and snatches of limping. The guitar lines are clean, rhythm section is together, and the keyboard gets punchy. The sophomore effort is more to the steady-steady side. One dub tune to close out with paper umbrellas and sand in your toes.

Outcome:
Not as gritty as rock or punk; nowhere near as smooth as soul or disco.
- ~ -
Neither one of these wil have you reaching for your Sennheiser headphones or anything of the sort, but they are worth a spin every few years to dust off all the complexities abounding in the rest of the collection. Get them on vinyl for $2 or less and you’ll be satisfied enough - who knows, maybe a cut or two will enter the next mix you make to give yer best mates a larf, the bugger can be a bit of a funny bloke. Bonzo Dog he ain’t, but worth a salty biscuit or two on a quiet evening.

::8/15 - both slightly above average; your mileage may vary to the better::

Lee Morgan - Tom Cat

One of two recent RVG remasters, Tom Cat is a Lee Morgan date recorded around the same time my favorite of his, Searching for a New Land, was, with a sextet featuring Curtis Fuller, Jackie McLean, McCoy Tyner, Bob Cranshaw, and Art Blakey. It’s getting to the point that I can look at a line up like this and know just how good it’s going to be. It’s always fun to notice the major impact Coltrane had on things as the mid-60s approached, especially with the use of new (or reintroduced) scales and modes, Tom Cat definitely brings this influence to the fore, although with Tyner at piano it’s hard not to have it close at hand. Anyway like Land, this struck me more as a group date than a line up of soloists and Blakey keeps things cracking along.

Hank Mobley - Hi Voltage

Hi Voltage could be one of Mobley’s best dates, or at least I tend to prefer his music as the 60s progress. With McLean and Cranshaw on board it was hard not compare this a little to the Lee Morgan I had just played, although this is definitely more of a straighter hard bop set. Fortunately, it’s also one of his best and things feel as fresh and lively as they tend to when all cylinders are moving.

Johnny Coles - Little Johnny C

Cranshaw was sure on a lot of these Blue Note releases! Although this release was basically recorded on two dates, with two different drummers, it strikes me as being rather cohesive and a fabulous Blue Note hard bop date, one that gets better with every listen. It doesn’t hurt to have Joe Henderson in his prime here, and the entirety benefits harmonically from the larger band. Stupendous stuff and one I moved up to an 11.

Den Fule - Quake

Quake comprises both Den Fule albums. It’s not a surprise there’s a big festival for Northside bands in Minneapolis once a year, as the town has always had something of a deep love and scene for folk rock music. Den Fule might be the perfect band to encapsulate this sort of thing, they take traditional folk and add rock to it, although perhaps in the most obvious of ways. I actually didn’t even know this was a 2 on 1 until recently, in fact it’s very difficult to tell from the music itself. A similar approach might be Tempest or the Horslips, it’s almost a bar band approach to folk music, the drums in the pocket, the reels all paced for dancing. And like Tempest, the approach is more successful in person than on album. I’m not even a huge Fairport Convention fan, which is the root of all this sort of thing, so Den Fule’s appeal is limited.

Fille Qui Mousse - Trixie Stapleton 291

Probably the closest to a Faust album anyone ever got, it’s even closer to Faust than all of their post-reunion albums put together. Probably most famous for being one of the “Nurse With Wound list” albums, its holds in common (as well as with the Faust Tapes) a cut and paste approach to music, lining a bunch of barely related musical segments together into one whole. Fille Qui Mousse probably has more in common with the Futura stable approach than the neighboring krautrock scene, but the results are definitely similar, although, like the Faust Tapes, I find myselves enjoying segments more than the entirety. A keeper 9, although I’ve heard it enough to assume it’s probably never going to go higher.

Nucleus - Hemispheres

First listen to a new archive release by British jazz-rockers, it’s actually rather amazing how many of these have been coming out, I think this is the third of four in the last few years. I’m writing this at home, so I can’t remember exactly when this was recorded, except it’s in the 70s sometime and one of the earlier line ups. Sounded like a good show, if maybe a bit thin in the recording but I wouldn’t swear to that without another listen.

Don Cherry - Where Is Brooklyn?

There’s something very alluring about Don Cherry’s early Blue Note releases, like Ornette’s Free Jazz album, there’s something very accessible about the way Cherry approached this material during these years, or at least I find these a lot easier to approach then his output in the early 70s where things were often a lot more spare. In fact, I’d also have to quote Cecil Taylor’s “Conquistador” as a similarity, the whole cacophony gone cosmic approach. It’s actually difficult at times to parse these down by singular elements as the results as a whole are what are so fascinating, waves of sound that would hint at Pharoah Sanders albums to come.